Comments on published papers

[The_Vulcan]

I am forever seeing results published where the statistics or the experiment are flawed and questionable.


Although I can think of an example… Here is a simple example I made up of what I am talking about.


I think the Challenger was on its 18th mission when it exploded
And the Columbia was on it’s 23rd when it burnt up.

So they averaged 20 missions before being destroyed.

So one could say there was a 1 in 20 chance of success for a shuttle mission.

As this sort of correct, I could if I were publishing a paper arguing that the shuttle missions are unsafe use these figures to back up my point.


But then there have been about 107 shuttle missions in total, so one could say that there is a 2 in 107 or 1 in 53 chance for a successful shuttle mission.


Depending on my stand, I could use either of these figures if I was a bad scientist, however the second is more accurate.


While I can think of examples of questionable studies and questionable statistics, can anyone else think of something that they wondered how could this be published ?

[SeiferTim]

That sort of thing happens all the time.... just look at some of those "truth" commercials, about smoking, and the way the Tabacco Companies 'bent' study results to their purposes... it's kinda funny, but sick at the same time.:!:

[teet]

That sort of thing happens all the time.... just look at some of those "truth" commercials, about smoking, and the way the Tabacco Companies 'bent' study results to their purposes... it's kinda funny, but sick at the same time.

and the way those truth commercials bend the results to make those companies look bad...

hehe

-teet

[RussianBeer]

Yes, and space exploration is unsafe, and everyone is aware of that. But the risk is calculated. I think its worth it, while its not a good thing that these shuttle get destroyed, i don't agree with NASA grounding indefently their flights. Lifes will be lost, but we have to take risks to advance on such a things as space.

[Yeldarb]

russian, i think you missed the point of the post :P

he was talking about skewed stats, not the shuttle, it was just an example :P

[The_Vulcan]

russian, i think you missed the point of the post
Thats ok, I don't mind my threads running around all over the place in Random, if something comes to mind I wanna hear it. :D


i don't agree with NASA grounding indefently their flights. Lifes will be lost, but we have to take risks to advance on such a things as space.
Well i don’t know if it was the loss of life that played a large portion in them grounding the fleet.
It was more than likely that the shuttle is the panicle of the US pride and accomplishment, so it looks bad when they loose one.
Oh, and they don’t have many and they know that they won’t be getting any new toys for a long time.

As for life, I think even if it was a one-way mission NASA would still have people willing to give their left nut for the chance. I mean even the relatives of the dead astronauts didn’t think badly of the way they died. They knew the astronauts would have still gone knowing the outcome.

One could stipulate it was a NASA planed conspiracy to get more funding. It was shortly after the incident that NASA’s budget was greatly increased. It’s not like NASA didn’t have options to them, they just blatantly chose to ignore them all.

[kirupa]

Something else cool that one of my professors told me was that Newton's first paper on planetary motion contained a major flaw in it, but it wasn't discovered until a few decades ago.

At that time, Newton was working on his gravitation and planetary relations, BUT he was also working on developing calculus. Because he couldn't introduce calculus as well as gravity, he had to use geometry to prove his case.

There was a minor logic error in his paper because geometry has its shortcomings. That's pretty impressive. Most people go through life barely able to make one major discovery. Newton made enough discoveries to have to force himself from having to introduce two life-changing events in one paper :)

And also, Gregor Mendel - the monk who experimented with genes and traits of pea plants is also rumored to ignore some of the data to make the numbers nicer.

:bad:

[The_Vulcan]

Well I had never heard of Gregor Mendel before. Goes to show you learn something new everyday.


odds are 10,000 to 1 against Mendel having given an accurate account of his research. In other words, Mendel is suspected of fudging the data to bring the results in line with theoretical predictions.

The naughty boy cheated BIG time, but he was right anyway....

[kirupa]

He had the concepts right. In fact, I learned about him today in Bio. He just rounded data to make it more presentable. Nothing in nature really works out in such nice ratios :)